A Mug's Game
by Ebony Kain
Summary: Maybe he was just too stubborn to die.  Or maybe he had it all figured out from the beginning.


**Title**: A Mug's Game

**Author**: Ebony Kain (Ithilgwath)

**Rating**: totally worksafe

**Disclaimer**: Sadly I don't own Transformers (well, I own a couple action figures, but…). Nor do I own the Endless. Alas!

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_"You lot may die. I expect you will, 'cos you're stupid. Not me, though. ... Death's a mug's game, and I'll have no part in it."_

_-Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good Fortune"_

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Before actually seeing organic creatures for the first time, he'd only vaguely understood the concept of gendered species. It had been theoretical. And it had actually taken more than a bit of time to really _comprehend_ that it wasn't something as simple as a different frame-type. That understanding didn't fully develop until their crash landing on the mud ball of a planet that he first visited when it was still more of an ice ball. It was the downloaded language patches from Teletraan 1 that had introduced gender-specific pronouns to him.

Thinking about it now, when he's got nothing else he can do, Starscream ponders how language alters one's perceptions of the universe. The sleek, mechanical body approaches him silently, as he has always witnessed its movements. But now, after having seen her on Earth in the guise of a tiny human, he wonders how he ever could have seen her as anything other than female.

She pauses by his crown; left crushed and abandoned by the transformer who called himself 'Galvatron' but that Starscream knows to the depths of his spark was Megatron.

"Well, as far as these things go, yours was pretty dramatic, don'tcha think?"

He stays where he is, watching her pick up the ruined metal. He won't approach her. He's seen her on countless worlds, and she always led people away by the hand, or an arm around the shoulder—companionable, as if she were going somewhere with a long-lost friend.

He refused to be tricked.

"Except I haven't. I'm not, and I won't," he retorts.

"Starscream," she says softly, kindly, and with a companionable familiarly—like she has known him for millennia and they were the closest of friends—"you have no body anymore."

"That doesn't mean I'm dead." He's certain when he says it. He knows this, deep inside, as he has always known ever since the first time he saw her gleaming metallic frame stooping to scoop up a young Seeker who had not been as ready for his first flight as he had thought. He had seen the Seeker stand and take her hand, even as the crumpled, sparking body had remained on the ground, slowly darkening to grey.

He doesn't have to go with her. He has a choice.

She ex-vents with a tiny shake of her head and shifts her weight to one foot. The movement causes the sigil on her chest plates to catch in the light. He has always wondered at its meaning, more so after seeing it in various places on Earth. He finds himself uncomfortable with asking. He doesn't want to get to know her, after all.

"You know, I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who've figured it out," there is something like a smile in her voice. "And I'd still have fingers left over. Hob's never lost his body though."

The crown drops to the ground again with a ringing clatter.

"That just means I'm better, then, doesn't it," he smirks; shifting what he supposes is simply the memory of his body to its feet, "I might as well be a god."

Her answering smile is knowing, "Even gods die, Starscream."

He scowls, but supposes she would know. "But _I_ don't."

"Well then. It's a date." Her cheerfulness is disconcerting, and his confusion is palpable.

"A date?"

"Yup!" she turns away, sauntering back the way she'd come. "You and me, kiddo. At the end of the Universe. It's a date."

Almost, he reaches out to her. Almost, he calls out to her for a more sensible answer. Almost, he demands that she act more like what she _is_ than his cheerful, carefree person she acts as.

Almost. But he doesn't.

Instead he sits back down, staring at her retreating form, seeing an elegant mech of white and black, and remembering a myriad of pale, dark-clad creatures on planets all across the universe. "All right," he says, softly. "It is a date."

Though he had thought his words too quiet for her to hear as she departs, she answers anyway."

"Be seeing you."


End file.
